Huawei, ZTE Employees Among Passengers on Missing Plane

Two major Chinese technology companies are among the many awaiting updates from an ongoing investigation into a Malaysia Airlines plane that went missing over the weekend.

Associated Press

CEO of Malaysia Airlines Ignatius Ong, center, speaks to the media outside a hotel room for relatives or friends of passengers aboard a missing Malaysia Airlines airplane in Beijing, China, on Mar. 10.

Two employees from telecommunications equipment supplier Huawei Technologies Co., and one employee from ZTE Corp. – Huawei’s major local competitor – are among the 227 passengers listed on the manifest of flight MH370, according to the two companies. The Boeing 777 jet en route to Beijing vanished early Saturday over the South China Sea. Search and rescue authorities are still looking for clues as to what’s happened to the aircraft.

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A Huawei spokeswoman at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen, China, said the two employees on the flight are Chinese, but did not identify them by name or provide further details.

“We are in very close contact with Malaysia Airlines and the Chinese Embassy in Malaysia,” she said. “Everyone here is very concerned and we are all watching the news.”

ZTE identified its employee as Li Yanlin, an engineer in his late 20s. Mr. Li is part of ZTE’s team of engineers in charge of installment and maintenance of telecom gear for the company’s clients in the Asia-Pacific region. ZTE said it has set up a special taskforce to support Mr. Li’s family and communicate with authorities to gather the latest information.

“We will assign employees to accompany Yanlin’s family to Kuala Lumpur to provide the fastest and most effective response to any contingencies,” ZTE said in a statement Monday.

Huawei, the world’s second-largest supplier of telecom networking gear after Sweden’s Ericsson, has about 150,000 employees world-wide. ZTE, Huawei’s smaller Chinese rival, has more than 55,000 employees globally. Both companies have their Malaysian offices in Kuala Lumpur.

According to a passenger list released by Malaysia Airlines, just over half of the passengers on the flight are Chinese citizens. Other passengers include a number of Malaysians, Indonesians, Australians and Indians. The list also includes an American executive at International Business Machines Corp.

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